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Forum:Policies, sources and made up stuff
I've long been a supporter of the notion that folks can come in here and write articles, whether or not the subject of the article comes from an existing fanfic/film/rpg or is only "in their mind" - as long as it's well-thought out, reasonable and adheres to quality standards. Recent and ongoing discussions on Talk:Porthos and Talk:Lieutenant Sanders, as well as the ongoing saga of Homesun have changed my mind. On Lieutenant Sanders, for example, Captain Zman has thrown together random bits and pieces of various Enterprise episodes to make what he thinks is a "kewl story." This is not the place for that. Fanfiction.net is full of thirteen year old authors who tell "stories" like that. Zman and Homesun and their "made up stuff" aside for a second, what happens when one of those preteen FF.net authors comes here and creates (for lack of a better term) "crappy" articles relating to their fic? Like the one where Kirk falls in love with Harry Mudd and they have an adventure with Spiderman and the Easter Bunny on the USS Tooth Fairy? Because that kind of story is out there. It's author could show up here, and under current conditions, say that its inclusion here is perfectly valid. Does anyone really want that to happen? Because once it starts, the flood of ill-thought and badly-formatted articles will overtake the quality material here. What about slash, especially as regards to canon characters? How would we deal with that? How do we handle crossovers, like the glut of ST vs. SW stuff out there? Getting back to the "immediate threat"... I propose we establish a policy that all information submitted to the wiki must come from existing fan fiction/films/online games/webcomics/whatever that has its own website (complete or in progress), or is part of a larger legitimate Trek-based site (ex, TWGuild.com), or is at least somehow published in a way that can be referenced (Star Trek: Unity episodes on YouTube). Right now, those restrictions would discount most of my material from inclusion, and that's a sacrifice I'd gladly make to stem the blood-dimmed tide of tripe from overwhelming the wiki. So, the idea is on the table. Discuss. --TimPendragon 18:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC) :The only problem I could see is that some people write their fics and don't have a place to publish them. For instance, I don't have a website to publish my fic on. They're just documents. However, most of the stuff I've included for my characters comes straight from the series bible and it will come up somewhere in the fic. I agree with the idea, but I think it's a little too far-reaching. --Kevin W. Adm•Tlk 18:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC) ::Valid point. There just needs to be some kind of objective criteria for distinguishing serious fic from "teeneybopper tripe." --TimPendragon 18:52, 3 December 2006 (UTC) This is what I've been saying for a while now. (And, gentleman, that's all the more reason to get your stuff online ASAP, to make it valid. Lord knows it's certainly "quality" enough. If you can do that good of work here, then there's no reason you can't do it good the other way too. There are tons of websites with free hosting--Lycos/Tripod, for one. I have oodles of space on my website (bought and paid for by yours truly); if you like, I'll put it up there, no strings attached.) Anyway, back to the discussion... It's a fine line, as Tim said. Take for example slash fiction: That's not my bag, and I'd personally rather not see it. But is there a legitimate ground for its denial, rhetorically speaking? And what happens if, saying we deny it, we start getting charged with sexual discrimination? I'm not quite sure how to answer that. As for the Zman/Jamie/Homesun stuff... Yes, BY ALL MEANS, it should come from verifiable sources, and be well-written, in terms of both context and wikification. My general rule of thumb is, if you can imagine it on Wikipedia, you can imagine it here. Like I told Homesun, this is an encyclopedia, not a scratch-pad or drawing board for ideas (although, inevitably, it may inspire some). (But as with User:The NCC Factor using my Star Trek: 3000 material, it should not be the basis for articles on here.) I mean, this is a no-brainer, seems to me. It's always evident when something is well-written, and "quality", compared to something that isn't. A wiki should not only inform, but entertain. And while "entertaining" may be a subjective term depending on individual tastes, it's easy to see what doesn't entertain--when you see something like that one article, I forget which one or who did it, with the Xindi-Insectoid and a badly-made Borg sphere image and mentions of "Super-Q" or something like that. It was enough to make you groan and want to move on to something else. And that's really the bottom line, for the appeal of any website: To keep your visitors on the site. So it's a guessing game, partly, to predict what will/won't do it, and adhere accordingly. In other words, we have the image of this wiki to consider. If, using plain ol' common sense, we can say "Ugh, this won't make us look good", then maybe we should reconsider its inclusion, or at least the nature of its inclusion (to wit, I see slash fiction crap that's done for nothing more than to be gratuitously homosexual)... but keep an open mind at the same time. In cases like that, a good fallback may be, "if you can't picture it on Star Trek, then you won't find it here." We can't please everyone all of the time, but while we're trying to build a database that will draw visitors, we're also allowed to think of ourselves, since we as members of this community are the community. There's no shame in that. If it turns us off and makes us want to leave, then there's something wrong... something to keep in mind in any case. Those are just my thoughts of the hour. --SasorizaA•T 02:24, 4 December 2006 (UTC) 'S'been almost a week now, since this was last discussed... Anybody else have anything to say? --TimPendragon 07:08, 9 December 2006 (UTC)